“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Late yesterday afternoon my pendulum told me that Jane’s symptoms stemmed from her feeling that she had failed to become a successful “straight” writer—a novelist, poet, essayist, et al.; that she felt she had failed as the serious writer she had always dreamed of becoming, that the psychic work represented a turning down a wrong path; that actually, basically, the psychic work represented failure to her rather than success. I was very excited by these ideas, more excited than I had been in a long time. I intuitively felt them to be true. I discussed them for some little while with her before we went out to a New Year’s Eve party at McClure’s. Jane seemed to agree with the ideas.

For some time Ruburt felt he was a failure, as a wife and as a writer. He did not see you succeeding, either. Conditions mentioned far earlier made communication difficult, and he brooded. The mobility, the point of mobility, represented moving ahead in his work, or not moving ahead. The apartment became a symbol. It was quite all right for the aspiring writer. If however he could not achieve the kind of success he wanted, then he might as well have the trappings.

(I was quite surprised the other day when Jane told me that our two apartments were okay to her if she was a writer, but not all right for a psychic—especially one who was becoming well known and was visited by all kinds of people, etc. She also told me that to her the idea of stairs represented success and failure—up and down, etc.)

There were also financial considerations. He had only lately freed himself from a part-time job. To refuse a psychic book that was definite, to try for another novel with no assurances, seemed foolhardy. At the same time his age bothered him. The young writer, aspiring, was no longer so young.

As a writer for example, alone, he does not feel a responsibility (underlined) to write every kind of book possible: gothics, mysteries, science fiction, poetry, essays, straight novels. There is no reason why he should, though he has the ability to write any of them well. So he need not feel that he has a responsibility to be a psychic healer, a clairvoyant, a medium, a psychic psychologist, and so forth, though he has the ability to be any of these.

Seven was the answer, but only if Seven led where it was supposed to lead. In the meantime there was the matter of a tour, or not, for Seth Speaks, and speaking engagements. He felt that if he accepted and became known as a psychic, in those terms, his chances of becoming known as a writer were lost, and beyond recovery. He would be pigeon-holed as a psychic. It was for those reasons that his improvement deteriorated.

Ruburt’s condition deteriorated after the meeting with Eleanor. The situation brought into focus, you see, the entire problem. Seagull’s middle-aged lady focused it further. (Bach’s description of Jane for Time.) The middle-aged lady was mentioned as middle-aged, and as a psychic, poet and science fiction writer—a turning of the ways in that the psychic books were mentioned, but no books of poetry, which gave impetus to Dialogues.